Harley On The MTA

The public service announcement on the left is courtesy of the TTC. The public service announcement on the right is courtesy of the MTA. On Friday morning, Accordion Guy Joey deVilla juxtaposed the two on his blog, along with the question "who plagiarized whom?"

Well, presuming that plagiarism is defined as the lack of attribution for an idea, then fortunately neither. This particular TTC poster, like a number of others (and even some of their pamphlets), explicitly states its origins; you just have to read the fine print (in this case, in the bottom left corner):

And the TTC's Brad Ross let deVilla know it, "with the downright Chuck-Norris-ballsiest first sentence I’ve seen in a comment on this blog in a good long time: 'You are wrong.'" Ross, the Harley-Davidson aficionado who in March became the TTC's first-ever (!) Director of Communications, after years as the City of Toronto's impossibly competent chief spokesperson, elaborated that the TTC "requested, and received, permission from the MTA to use this creative concept. Transit properties across North America often share 'creative' when communicating safety messages to their customers." deVilla soon after wrote a follow-up post clarifying the relationship between the two PSAs.

Which goes to show that hiring someone who knows how to use Google Blog Alerts is probably the smartest thing the TTC has done in a long time.

Pics "courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele and Vidiot," via Accordion Guy's blog. Credit text taken from the TTC's "We're serious about your safety" brochure [PDF].